14.1. Red Hat Linux and "clones"

Since starting writing the IPv6 & Linux - HowTo it was my intention to enable a persistent IPv6 configuration which catch most of the wished cases like host-only, router-only, dual-homed-host, router with second stub network, normal tunnels, 6to4 tunnels, and so on. Nowadays there exists a set of configuration and script files which do the job very well (never heard about real problems, but I don't know how many use the set). Because this configuration and script files are extended from time to time, they got their own homepage: initscripts-ipv6 homepage (Mirror). Because I began my IPv6 experience using a Red Hat Linux 5.0 clone, my IPv6 development systems are mostly Red Hat Linux based now, it's kind a logic that the scripts are developed for this kind of distribution (so called historic issue). Also it was very easy to extend some configuration files, create new ones and create some simple hook for calling IPv6 setup during IPv4 setup.

Fortunately, in Red Hat Linux since 7.1 a snapshot of my IPv6 scripts is included, this was and is still further on assisted by Pekka Savola.

Mandrake since version 8.0 also includes an IPv6-enabled initscript package, but a minor bug still prevents usage ("ifconfig" misses "inet6" before "add").

14.1.1. Test for IPv6 support of network configuration scripts

You can test, whether your Linux distribution contain support for persistent IPv6 configuration using my set. Following script library should exist:

In shown example, the used version is 20011124. Check this against latest information on initscripts-ipv6 homepage (Mirror) to see what has been changed. You will find there also a change-log.

14.1.2. Short hint for enabling IPv6 on current RHL 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, ...

Check whether running system has already IPv6 module loaded

# modprobe -c | grep net-pf-10
alias net-pf-10 off

If result is "off", then enable IPv6 networking by editing /etc/sysconfig/network, add following new line

NETWORKING_IPV6=yes

Reboot or restart networking using

# service network restart

Now IPv6 module should be loaded

# modprobe -c | grep ipv6
alias net-pf-10 ipv6

If your system is on a link which provides router advertisement, autoconfiguration will be done automatically. For more information which settings are supported see /usr/share/doc/initscripts-$version/sysconfig.txt.